Glance at a political party’s platform, catch a politician’s speech, sample the news, and you will find the family—not as a mere group of people living together in the private sphere, but as a contentious entity at the center of political disputes and policy debates over everything from marriage equality and gender identity to immigration and welfare reform. The key role of the family in politics and public policy, so often relegated to the outer margins of political science and theory, comes in for long overdue consideration in this volume. Bringing together political scientists and legal scholars of wide-ranging interests and perspectives, Stating the Family explores the role of the family in American political development: as a focus of political struggle, a place where policy happens, a means of distributing governmental goods, and a way of relating individuals to the state and to each other in legal terms. While the authors gathered here examine important policy questions that relate to the family—including immigration, welfare, citizenship, partisanship, and ideology—they pay particular attention to changes in family structures and responsibilities in light of the rise of neoliberalism. Illustrated with case studies—some contemporary, some historical—their essays provide individual takes on different links between family and politics, creating a nuanced conversation on this complex topic. The result is a multifaceted view of the family’s place in the development of American political institutions and a unique understanding of the work that family does to structure politics—and that politics does to structure families.

The phone call that changed their lives forever… Minutes after Vice President Nick Cappuano and Lt. Sam Holland get the call that President Nelson has been found dead in the residence on Thanksgiving, they’re still processing that Nick has been asked to come to the White House to take the oath of office. As they go through the motions to ensure a peaceful transition of power, Sam has a million and one concerns about her husband, her family, the Nelson family, the country and the enormity of what Nick is about to take on. In the back of her mind is another major concern: What does this mean for my job? No other first lady in history has held a job outside the White House, but she’s determined to be the first, to blaze new trails for those who will follow her. However, in order to do that, she quickly realizes that compromises will have to be made to continue working as a Homicide detective. Their lives become an immediate firestorm of meetings, requests for interviews, difficult questions from their children and a host of potential landmines to navigate as they make the transition from second family to first family. An unexpected issue with a diplomatic trip to Iran quickly thrusts Nick into the thick of his new responsibilities while Sam confronts a murder investigation that may have ties to a cold case from fifteen years ago. As everything around them spins out of control, Sam and Nick take refuge with each other, relying on their unbreakable bond to see them through the storm.

Examines the intersection of politics and intergenerational family relations in China from the Qing period to 1949.

Presents a robust defence of the essential place of stable marital families in modern liberal societies.

Different theories of childhood, children's rights and the relationships between children, parents and state are examined. The care system and the extent to which children have been, and are involved in decisions is the main focus.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, China's sovereignty was fragile at best. In the face of international pressure and domestic upheaval, young urban radicals—desperate for reforms that would save their nation—clamored for change, championing Western-inspired family reform and promoting free marriage choice and economic and emotional independence. But what came to be known as the New Culture Movement had the unwitting effect of fostering totalitarianism. In this wide-reaching, engrossing book, Susan Glosser examines how the link between family order and national salvation affected state-building and explores its lasting consequences. Glosser effectively argues that the replacement of the authoritarian, patriarchal, extended family structure with an egalitarian, conjugal family was a way for the nation to preserve crucial elements of its traditional culture. Her comprehensive research shows that in the end, family reform paved the way for the Chinese Communist Party to establish a deeply intrusive state that undermined the legitimacy of individual rights.

In The State, The Family and Education, first published in 1980, Miriam David provides an entirely new analysis of the relationship of the State to the family and education. David shows how the State, through its educational policies, regulates family relationships with, and within, schools. This book provides a welcome analysis of educational policy from a socialist-feminist perspective, re-examining the ways in which women as parents, teachers and pupils are involved in the education system. This book will be of interests to students of education.